Simkin.Org

Category: Tech stuff

  • Advent Powerline 85Mbps Drivers

    Searching for a driver can occasionally be a pain in the rear. I recently barfed my powerline boxes. Finally found the drivers here. Thought I’d post this to help anyone else that is looking for it.

  • Thecus N299 CIFS problem

    MY trusty little N299 NAS has decided that CIFS isn’t something it likes. I thus need to factory reset it and reconfigure it. Luckily I won’t lose all my data but it is still a pain.

    It is a cheap NAS. It is a little workhorse. But I don’t recommend getting one.

    It is slow, buggy and I cut a hole in the side of mine because it kept struggling when the weather got hot.Oh and it doesn’t spin-down. Ever.

    Don’t buy one of these.

  • Augmented Reality

    Been playing with Layar, an AR app on the iPhone. It has a load of free “layers” that each provide an overlay on top of what your phone camera can see. Most useful for navigating around cities or simply for identifying landmarks. Usefulness will grow as content is added. The benefit there is that anyone can create content and make it available free or at a charge. Download it and have a look. www.layer.com

  • Squid on Ubuntu

    I want to build a transparent squid proxy for home to play around with wccp configs. First step is to get a working squid proxy:

    cd ~
    wget http://www.squid-cache.org/Versions/v3/3.1/squid-3.1.4.tar.gz
    tar zxf squid-3.1.4.tar.gz
    cd squid-3.1.4

    sudo ./configure –prefix=/usr –localstatedir=/var –libexecdir=/usr/lib/squid –srcdir=. –datadir=/usr/share/squid –sysconfdir=/etc/squid –with-logdir=/var/log –with-pidfile=/var/run/squid.pid –enable-wccp

    make
    make install

    cd /etc/squid
    sudo vi squid.conf

    squid.conf:

    http_port 3128
    hierarchy_stoplist cgi-bin ?
    refresh_pattern ^ftp:           1440    20%     10080
    refresh_pattern ^gopher:        1440    0%      1440
    refresh_pattern -i (/cgi-bin/|\?) 0     0%      0
    refresh_pattern .               0       20%     4320
    acl manager proto cache_object
    acl localhost src 127.0.0.1/32
    acl to_localhost dst 127.0.0.0/8
    acl localnet src 10.0.0.0/8     # RFC 1918 possible internal network
    acl localnet src 172.16.0.0/12  # RFC 1918 possible internal network
    acl localnet src 192.168.0.0/16 # RFC 1918 possible internal network
    acl SSL_ports port 443
    acl Safe_ports port 80          # http
    acl Safe_ports port 21          # ftp
    acl Safe_ports port 443         # https
    acl Safe_ports port 70          # gopher
    acl Safe_ports port 210         # wais
    acl Safe_ports port 1025-65535  # unregistered ports
    acl Safe_ports port 280         # http-mgmt
    acl Safe_ports port 488         # gss-http
    acl Safe_ports port 591         # filemaker
    acl Safe_ports port 777         # multiling http
    acl CONNECT method CONNECT
    http_access allow manager localhost
    http_access deny manager
    http_access deny !Safe_ports
    http_access deny CONNECT !SSL_ports
    http_access allow localhost
    http_access allow localnet
    http_access deny all

    start squid with: sudo squid -z

    check it is running: ps -el | grep squid

    Check the access log: cat /etc/access.log

    Next step is getting WCCP configured:

    http://wiki.squid-cache.org/Features/Wccp  & http://wiki.squid-cache.org/ConfigExamples/Intercept/LinuxDnat

  • Nagios on Ubuntu 8.1

    So I thought I’d try to find oout why my desktop and NAS keep arguing. Nagios. That will help. So I fired-up a spare piece of tin, dropped Ubuntu 8.1 onto it and followed some instructions. The instructions are a bit out of date so I thought I’d record how I actually did it in case it helps somebody else.

    Ubuntu

    I assume you have installed it with LAMP to save a lot of farting around. If not, aptitude yourself to a point where you have then come back here.

    Compilers and Libraries

    sudo apt-get install build-essential

    sudo apt-get install libgd2-xpm-dev

    Nagios

    cd ~

    sudo wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/nagios/nagios-3.1.0.tar.gz?use_mirror=voxel

    sudo wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/nagiosplug/nagios-plugins-1.4.13.tar.gz?use_mirror=voxel

    Extract it (If you have a newer build of Nagios, change the path names below):

    sudo tar -zxvf nagios-3.1.0.tar.gz

    cd nagios-3.1.0

    Create a user and Group:
    sudo useradd -m nagios

    sudo passwd nagios

    sudo groupadd nagcmd

    sudo usermod -a -G nagcmd nagios

    sudo usermod -a -G nagcmd www-data

    Now we can install….

    sudo ./configure --with-command-group=nagcmd

    sudo make all

    sudo make install

    sudo make install-init

    sudo make install-config

    sudo make install-commandmode

    sudo make install-webconf

    Create an Apache user we can login as called nagiosadmin:

    sudo htpasswd -c /usr/local/nagios/etc/htpasswd.users nagiosadmin

    Extract and compile the plugins that were downloaded earlier:

    cd ~

    tar -zxvf nagios-plugins-1.4.13.tar.gz

    cd nagios-plugins-1.4.13

    sudo ./configure --with-nagios-user=nagios --with-nagios-group=nagios

    sudo make

    sudo make install

    Create a link to start the service:
    sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/nagios /etc/rcS.d/S99nagios

    Verify the config:
    sudo /usr/local/nagios/bin/nagios -v /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg

    Restart Apache:
    sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

    Start Nagios:
    sudo /etc/init.d/nagios start

    You should now be able to log into the Nagios web interface (http://localhost/nagios) using the nagiosadmin user and password.

    Customise your installation…

    sudo vim /usr/local/nagios/etc/nagios.cfg

    I have to credit thedailyadmin.com for helping me out with a lot of the above. I urge you to go visit that site if only to stop me feeling guilty .

  • Mac Mini Blu-Ray

    I have a lovely little Mac Mini as my media centre. I am proud of it. It could do with the Amex Digital BD-UG1
    to turn it into a full-on HD Blu-ray player but I can’t find a UK retailer that sells one. Sob.

  • Windows 7 and the Realtek ALC850 AC97 chipset

    If only it played 5.1 instead of just stereo….

    Well you can, after a fashion, get it to play out of all the speakers if you can find your way to the Realtek website and download the drivers.

    Of course if you then discover that the port on your motherboard is fried, you have just wasted half an hour of your life.  Aaargh.

  • Dawn of War II Games for Windows Connection problem 0x80151911

    You have to hate it when you have your mates all lined up to play a multi-player online game and you are the one with the sick computer.

    They are very kind about it but you know they are muting their microphones and shouting “muppet” at you. Or worse.

    For me it was trying to get Dawn of War II to connect to Games for Windows. It just kept barfing. Arrgh.

    Tried unlocking the necessary network ports: UDP 88, 3074, TCP 3074. Nope. Didn’t do it.

    Tried opening the access-list on my trusty Cisco 1702. Nope.

    Then we looked at the MTU on the PC. Aha!!

    If you have your PC MTU set to a value lower than 1362, it fails.

    Pop along to the MTU registry key (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\), change it to at least 1370 (I recommend 1492 personally) and restart.

    If you have specific values per interface, look at the keys for each adapter in turn: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\[Adapter ID] and create a new DWORD under each one called MTU with the appropriate value.

    Good pair of links to read: http://forums.gamesforwindows.com/t/785.aspx and http://www.microsoft.com/games/en-GB/Support/Pages/troubleshootingIssues.aspx

    Sorry guys!

  • Bootable USB and Scripted Telnet

    Occasionally I have a handful of projects that kind of just blurge into one. Occasionally I just make up words like blurge.

    Recently I decided to resurrect the ancient APC Mast Console and attempt to replace the faulty time switch in the shed with something more home-automationy. Just to be clear, the switch in question turns the garden lights on and off at set periods during the night. It is not a switch for turning time on and off.

    Anyway. I got it working and found the telnet interface. All I needed was a little script and telnet would do wonders. Except of course Windows command-line Telnet doesn’t let you do that. A bit of searching and I found this little tool. If you’ve found this page by googling that last phrase I feel you will be very disappointed. If you want a way to very simply  automate a Telnet session, you can click your way to happiness.

    The other thing I wanted to do was to finally get an old PC booted so that I can format it to pieces. It runs an old Linux build though so Windows has trouble with it if you just drop a CD in and nextnextnext. What I needed was to be able to boot into an old DOS version or boot from a USB stick.

    Spiceworks have a thriving community full of helpful people like Thereal_joe who provide just that kind of help. Here is his guide to using DISKPART for making a bootable USB key.

    For those hanging on to find out where to get that ISO for a bootable DOS6.22 image (and know there will be somebody out there), here you go.

  • TV Catchup for iphone

    At a recent shindig, a friend told me about http://iphone.tvcatchup.com and I have to admit that being able to watch TV on the iPhone is cool…..